ART gives 1697 play sassy update
CAMBRIDGE -- When the American Repertory Theatre announced it would be doing its first ever Restoration comedy, you knew it wouldn't be powdered wigs, ornate drawing rooms, period costumes, and exchanges of British witticisms.
The ART's production of John Vanbrugh's 1697 play ''The Provok'd Wife" has a few wigs, though they're not particularly powdered. The drawing room is a large, barely furnished space augmented by Marina Draghici's sliding panels inventively denoting changes of scenery. The fashions put together long coats and leather pants. And the witticisms, once you get past the prologue addressing the People's Republic of Cambridge -- in couplets, no less -- are spoken with Virginia accents.
Yes, Virginia, there is a sanity clause for all this mixing and matching. Director Mark Wing-Davey, a British lad himself, wanted to avoid the usual staid rendition that tries to imitate Royal Shakespeare Company-type production values and accents.
Instead, he has gone for a more direct, modernist conceptualization that reconnects American audiences and actors to what scandalized audiences 300 years ago. Given that almost nothing can scandalize today's theatergoers, the ART production is quite a success -- as smart as it is entertaining. And if we're not scandalized, we're at least titillated enough by the sexiness and licentiousness that we get the picture of how the play must have shocked sensibilities of yore.
The story revolves around the Brutes. Vanbrugh, like his contemporaries, had a ball with names. In addition to Lord and Lady Brute, there's Heartfree, Lady Fancyfull, Constant, Colonel Bully, and Rasor, all of whom -- except for Lady Brute -- more than live up to their name.
Lord Brute is as dissolute as they come, drinking up a storm as he rages against married life in general and his in particular. Divorces were hard to come by at the time, so his wife longs for some extramarital resolution to her life in a cage, albeit a relatively gilded one. The Brutes aren't the only ones looking for sexual healing. Lady Brute's niece, their would-be lovers, and a Southern belle -- as well as the servants -- are all hoping to get it on with someone somewhat outside their grasp.
If Lord Brute lives up to his name, that doesn't stop him from capturing our fancy. Or to be more accurate, it doesn't stop Bill Camp from capturing our fancy with a stunning show of comedic dexterity -- part W.C. Fields in his drunken desires and tirades, part Dame Edna in his riotous ability to transform himself by dressing in women's clothes, and part Homer Simpson in his animated ineptitude to get what he wants.
Put it all together and you have a performance of Falstaffian proportions, despite Camp's more slender frame. The actor has been a frequent collaborator with ART, and he only gets better with age. Here, if we don't exactly root for him, we don't want him to get very far from center stage, either.
Not that we mean to imply that he dominates the cast, which has been smartly assembled of leading men and women from outside the area and a supporting cast of remaining ART regulars, all of whom have put on their best farcical faces, particularly Karen MacDonald and Thomas Derrah. (Will LeBow, ironically, isn't in this, but will be in ''The Rivals," the upcoming Restoration comedy at the Huntington Theatre Company.)
Effie Johnson's scheming Lady Fancyfull is tremendously likable in her unlikability, channeling Scarlett O'Hara and Blanche Dubois into her languor and vanity. The four main would-be lovers -- Lady Brute (Kate Forbes) and Constant (Peter Rini), her niece Bellinda (Deborah Knox Meschan), and Heartfree (Adam Dannheisser) -- all nicely capture their characters' yearning.
And there is a reason for those Virginia accents, as the ART's excellent program notes detail. (Get there early; they're worth a read.) Some of Charles I's followers emigrated from England to Virginia when Oliver Cromwell came to power and helped fashion the accents there. Wing-Davey thought that the Virginia accents would create a link for contemporary audiences, and he's right, though some of Vanbrugh's more poetic turns tend to get overrun in the process.
Still, Wing-Davey's clever staging of such moments as a 17th-century assignation in a 21st-century red-light district gives the story a timeless feel. The accents strike a similar chord; we're simultaneously reminded of Tennessee Williams and William Shakespeare. Call it ''Courtesan on a Hot Tudor Roof" and you won't be off the mark. The sexual to-ing and fro-ing as well as the musings about love seem almost as up to date as ''Closer" or ''Enduring Love."
If there's a criticism, the staging can make the characters, particularly the four main lovers, seem overly remote and the setting a bit antiseptic, which is what Wing-Davey has said he was trying to avoid. Jennifer Tipton's lighting is strangely bland, which, given her spectacular track record, must be in keeping with the director's overall design.
Nevertheless, ''The Provok'd Wife" is theater at its most distinctive. The ART has gotten off to a late start this year, but who says that all good theatrical things have to begin in September? ''The Provok'd Wife" is a most unusual and most welcome holiday present. 